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Well, the Panama Canal is exactly that, built mostly that way.
Panama Canal is the biggest NIMBY project ever
Because it was built at the thinnest part of the content and used existing lakes?
Pretty sure Omaha would have loved an East\West canal across the continent.
Because it wasn’t done for or with the approval of locals
But it was done, which is kind of the opposite of NIMBY. Also it’s not a project that could go anywhere, except that no one wants it.
Closing Guantanamo was a NIMBY thing because, while everyone agrees it should happen, no one wanted the detainees in their backyard. (As ridiculous as that is.)
The Panama canal was a US NIMBY project I’d argue. Give us the canal but without impacting our territory.
Your comment is actually insane.
There is no way the US would not have preferred the canal to be in their backyard.
We didn’t maintain administration of the canal for just over a century for no reason. We would have put that shit in the Rio Grande, if we could have. Unfortunately that river runs dry for several months a year.
Especially since that particular area of the world is some of the least developed.
It connected several lakes in the narrowest part of the continent. Not ‘exactly that’ at all
If they could do it in ancient Greece then Americans can do it today for sure!
Stolen from !topview@lemmy.world
Also: although planned over 2000 years ago, it wasn’t really made by ancient Greeks. They gave up and made a road to transport ships on it instead of actually digging. Only in modern time did they actually finish the canal
I love the 1950s, the solution to any problem was just “idk, have you tried nuking it?”
Definitely. And just like today with ‘ai’
This might also make it really easy to hit the 2 degree climate target.
More like the -2 degree Celcius average World temperature target.
Can’t just let them go to waste!
About 36 feet above sea level though. How are we gonna clear a waterway from coast to coast, though? C’mon, boffins, let’s sort this out!
Locks and dams. Thousands of miles of locks and dams.
Nah, I vote canel tunnel!
SHOVEL!
“I get my kicks… on Canal 66.”
My first thought was if this was remotely possible on this scale, how many things would be disrupted and changed from the water movement alone. The Panama canal has to have locks because of the ocean differences, but no way would you have locks spanning a few hundred miles across. This thing would have tides back and forth.
Panama canal has to have locks because of the ocean differences
It’s actually mostly due to the landscape of Panama, including the lake it uses to traverse and the mountains. The Pacific and Atlantic oceans don’t different that much, maybe a few feet. And mostly due to tidal differences.
Oh, so it’s like an escalator for ships up and down.
Essentially yeah. Or a bunch of elevators up then down. Both descriptions work.
Plus literally chopping down a large stretch of both the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada would be insane.
Or could just go over tbh
Just made the entire river underground! A big underground river spanning thousands of miles. It’d require a hell of a lot more work but it wouldn’t disrupt things on the surface as much.
Imagine getting Ever Givened under Kansas.
My first thought too. This needs a Randall Monroe ‘What If?’ explanation.
There’s a sea level canal in Greece, the Corinth canal. And it has pretty strong tidal currents.
I wonder if, hypothetically, we could use such currents for more efficient power generation compared to the current tidal power generation.
Goodbye, Kentucky
Actually, guys, maybe we should hear them out?
…northern kentucky still northern kentucking, looks viable…
Assuming the river would be identical in depth and breadth to the Panama canal, if every man, woman, and child in the US picked up a shovel they would need to move 305 cubic feet of dirt each. So if we all just moved 1 cubic foot of dirt per day, we could pull this off in a year.
Hey, you’re a numbers guy right? What’s to say we take all that extra dirt and make an island? Asking for a friend
Hawa-II, this needs to happen. Opening date is June 13, 2025.
Let’s fucking goooo
That’s how the Soviet gulags built canals and railroads btw. Lots of deaths
Do it small scale first and turn Florida into an island.
Then push it away
The Caribbean has suffered enough
Then keep pushing it further into the Atlantic.
Until it crashes into England 🙏
Someone move Ireland south
No, not that far. Please stop in middle of the Atlantic. Or do you hope both sink?
That’s gonna be the weirdest Atlantis origin story
it could solve the water crisiseses
Dude all you need is 4 square meters and 2 water buckets
Infinite water glitch
Infinite food glitch
Would also solve some of the rising ocean levels too!
It annoys me that you’re correct
I think I’d hate to live downsteam from where the Mississippi is bisected.
I wonder if that river would remain salty for its entire existence
In which direction would it flow?
From the center to the borders, due to rain.
I wouldn’t be so certain about that. Evaporation might be stronger similar to the mediterreanian sea. So water would flow from both sides into the channel.
But such a project probably disturbes weather patterns and ocean currents all together. Hence, I don’t think we can be curtain until we’ve tried it. Now grab your shovel. FOR SCIENCE!
We need to be curtain!
LET US ALL BECOME CURTAINS
Woopsi
I mean ‘Weepsi’
Maybe the water would follow the Moon’s pull like a tide, so from the Atlantic to the Pacific?
It’d probably depend on the tide.
I feel like there has to be an easier way to solve the homeless problem in San Francisco.
I don’t trust anyone South of the Mistersippi river.
This will require more bridges, which creates more jobs. It’s genius!
Literally described the Mississippi river.
If we could connect the Missouri to the Snake River we could do pretty much the same thing. There’s a seaport in Idaho already
Technically, it’s already done!
Time to get dredging!
Except the map makes it look like a thousand times wider than the Mississippi.
